I'm disappointed

Rating: 5/10 (16 November 2005)

Me and my sisters were kind of excited about 28 Days Later when we first saw its trailer. We thought that finally, there's a movie about zombies and biological epidemics that actually made sense. But we were highly disappointed when we finally saw its content.
There are a lot of unexplained actions in scenes scattered throughout the movie. First let's get to the cause : a virus called "rage" which causes the infected to be well...enraged. But that's it, the infected are enraged, period. No more explanations (not even a scientific one), but in my opinion it's kind of senseless, a virus transmitted by blood, causes the infected to be enraged, it seems more likely that this concept be adapted to a psychological thriller movie. And transmission "takes about 10-20 seconds"-according to the character of Selena, I don't think that a virus could blend with the blood in a very short span of time as that. The origin itself is very questionable, how could an ape in captivity forced to watch violent scenes from TVs harbor a virus transmitted by blood??? It seems quite impossible to me. The infected vomiting a mass of blood seems also baseless.
The story is very short for me, not to mention that most of the scenes are not connected to each other. When Jim, Selena and Hannah found their way to a group of soldiers who promised a cure, Jim finds out that these soldiers only wanted women to have sex with, because they're stressed out with the situation. I mean, that's one big leap from the big problem of infection. And I think that the word "infection" is inappropriate an overused.
Not to mention that there are a lot of goofs in the movie. It shouldn't be called a zombie movie, you can't call them that because the infected are alive, a zombie is dead-turned-alive. And how the streets are empty, wouldn't it be more believable if there was at least one dead body outside? But what puzzles me most is how the whole city lost electricity, water and radio signals, for these to be available, machines are used so that people don't have to manually work these out. So how could electricity, water and radio signals disappear with the people? Or in the beginning of the movie, how could a group of activists penetrate a facility of that nature? And why is it left without any security? Or why when they stopped in the grocery, from the outside it could be seen to be in complete darkness, but when they get inside, the whole place is bright because all the lights are on, when there wasn't supposed to be any electricity. Or the scene where Selena was giving Hannah pills saying "I'm making you not get it" not get what? Definitely not the infection because apparently there's no cure. Hannah didn't take it because the soldier came in before she got the chance to put it in her mouth, but she behaves like a drugged person after, but then she sobers up when she sees her family picture.
I think what caused the disappointment for me is the lack of explanation and reason. There was no explanation behind the origin and activity of the virus. There was no understanding of anything at the end of the movie. It's more like another excuse to see gore, or to blow up a building (a gasoline station in this movie) or to enter a grocery store and take everything you want without paying.
But I do praise Cillian Murphy's acting abilities. And also that who played the soldier's leader (I forgot the name) and Selena - she played her part of a sexy, attractive, tough female with angst very nicely. Though I think that Megan Burns(Hannah) got a little more credit for her small part.